Highway Name To Pay Tribute To Area Engineer

When the widening and rerouting of State Road 80 from West Palm Beach to Belle Glade is completed in 1989, it will be known as the Kenneth C. Mock Highway.

Appropriate, say many who have been involved over long years with the construction, because of the work Mock contributed to the project as both a professional engineer and an involved citizen.

Raised and educated in Pahokee, Mock aimed much of his work at making Palm Beach County a better place to live. He died in 1979.

``In all his work, he was concerned about people, as well as about projects,`` said Frank Jones, who succeeded Mock as chairman of the Canal Hazards Safety Committee.

The rerouting of State Road 80 was one of Mock`s most consuming personal projects.

Jones credits Mock with getting the Florida Department of Transportation to change its mind about the way roads should be built in the Glades.

Had it not been for Mock`s theories being put into practice by the DOT, Jones said, the relocation of the western segment of the highway near Belle Glade might have been written off as too expensive.

Now under construction, the new route bypasses the westernmost stretch from 20-Mile Bend to central Belle Glade. Abutting the Ocean Canal, this section has contributed more than any other part of the route to the road`s nickname of ``Killer 80.``

Because of its narrow two lanes, low guard rails and lack of shoulders, this section has claimed dozens of lives.

The new route cuts a four-lane swath across sugar cane fields, safely away from any canals, joining with Hooker Highway immediately north of Belle Glade.

``He was one of the pioneers, really,`` DOT District Engineer Bill Fowler said of Mock. ``We selected his firm to do the design because of his local knowledge, but he was more than just an engineer under contract.

``Because he knew the area so well, he was someone you could call and talk to just for advice,`` Fowler said. His firm of Mock, Roos and Searcy, now Mock, Roos and Associates of West Palm Beach, grew to become one of Palm Beach County`s most prominent engineering firms, working with state, county and city governments as well as private developers.

While the development of State Road 80 has not been easy -- fraught as it has been with delays and unkept political promises over a half-century -- it probably would have been a lot tougher without Mock`s involvement, said state Rep. Jim Watt, R-Lake Park, who sponsored the bill in this year`s legislative session to name the highway in his honor.

``He was very involved in the Glades,`` Watt said, ``and he talked to a lot of the property owners out there to get them to agree to run the new route across their land.``

A lot of that involvement was through the Canal Hazards Safety Committee, formed in 1964 as a combination watchdog-lobbying group to push for better roads in the Glades.

One of that committee`s stated top priorities has always been the widening and rerouting of State Road 80.

Jones, an engineer with U.S. Sugar Corp. and a committee member since 1969, said Mock played a key role as an idea man in convincing the state to move ahead with construction of the highway.

Within two years of its formation the committee, with Mock at the helm, had researched and proposed a completely new route for State Road 80. It was shifted north, away from its present location on Southern Boulevard, to run a straight line from Okeechobee Boulevard west of West Palm Beach to Belle Glade.

Opposition from both residents and county officials not wanting more traffic on Okeechobee Boulevard, however, forced selection of a compromise route, using Southern Boulevard as far west as 20-Mile Bend, then shifting the route north.

``Building roads in the Glades,`` he explained, ``the DOT had historically removed all the muck and hauled in fill material either from West Palm Beach or as far away as Andytown (in Broward County). There is none in the Glades. That`s at least a 40-mile haul anyway you cut it.``

The amount of fill that would be needed for a four-lane roadbed, plus excavating and replacing five feet of organically rich but structurally unstable muck soil, would have been a gigantic project, Jones said.

``The cost of that was tremendous,`` he said. ``By using local materials, you could reduce the cost (of construction) by almost 50 percent.``

Mock believed a stable road could be built on top of the muck, and set out to prove it, Jones said.

State Road 715 -- Bacom Point Road -- which runs along the edge of Lake Okeechobee from Pahokee to Belle Glade, had been built in the 1930s with local materials, he noted. By the late 1960s, it had needed resurfacing only once.

After the DOT did some tests on that road and determined that Mock`s arguments were sound, an experimental section of almost a mile was built in 1971 on State Road 80 between Belle Glade and South Bay, Jones said. It is still in use, and as good as ever.